The Madras High Court on Friday refused to grant bail to the 2017 Kodanad Estate heist-cum-murder case accused K.V. Sayan and Valayar Manoj. The relief was denied on the ground that an interview given by them, in January 2019, implicating Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami in the case was aimed at misdirecting the trial.
Justice R. Subramanian refused to independently re-examine the effect of the interview when Justice G.K. Ilanthiraiyan of the High Court had on March 3, 2019 already held that it amounted to interference in administration of justice.
“Once I reach the said conclusion, I have no other option but to concur with the findings of the learned judge whatever I might have thought if the matter had come before me as res integra (an unexamined issue),” he added.
However, pointing out that Justice Ilanthiraiyan, while disposing of a plea for speedy trial by a prosecution witness, had recently directed the Principal District and Sessions Court in the Nilgiris to conclude the trial within three months, Justice Subramanian too ordered that it should be completed within the prescribed time limit.
Kodanad Estate was owned jointly by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and her close aide V.K. Sasikala. After Jayalalithaa’s death on December 5, 2016 and Sasikala’s incarceration in a disproportionate assets case on February 14, 2017, a heist was reported in the estate on the intervening night of April 23 and 24 of 2017.
An armed gang had reportedly trespassed into the estate and decamped with some valuables after murdering a security guard. Police investigation reportedly revealed that the crime was plotted by Jayalalithaa’s former car driver C. Kanagaraj but he got killed in a road accident at Attur in Salem on April 29, 2017.
On the same day, Sayan too had met with a road accident in which he lost his wife and child near Palakkad in Kerala. The police arrested him on June 6, 2017 when he was recuperating in a hospital and he came out on bail granted by a judicial magistrate on September 11, 2017 since the police had failed to file a charge sheet within 90 days. As far as Manoj was concerned, he was arrested on May 1, 2017 and granted bail on December 15, 2017. After their release, the duo gave a video interview to a New Delhi based journalist Mathew Samuel in January 2019 alleging that the entire crime took place at the instruction of the Chief Minister and that Kanagaraj had confided it to them.
